Knowledge region at sea 2070 came to visit NL Space Campus
How can our region remain attractive for companies and can we strengthen the prosperity of our residents? To find an answer to this question, Leiden as a knowledge city together with the municipalities of The Hague, Delft and Zoetermeer make use of the knowledge available in the region at, for example, the universities. The four municipalities call this 'Knowledge Region by the Sea'. To get a real feeling for the opportunities, they came to visit the NL Space Campus.
Students of landscape architecture and urban planning work together with professionals on concrete building blocks for a regional spatial-economic perspective using the natural and urban landscape as a basis. The landscape plays an important role in the attraction for businesses. Due to climate change and the use of other energy sources, the landscape will change in the future. To think about what these changes mean for our region, one of the four international design teams made a bicycle safari through the Hollandse Duinen National Park with their supervisor from the TU-Delft. The team of six landscape and urban planning students visited the Bio Science Park in Leiden, Valkenhorst, Unmanned Valley and Dunea in Katwijk and NL Space Campus. The students and their guides studied, among other things, our future drinking water supply. Their analysis is used for follow-up research.
If the Water Board writes in the 'Blue Lens' that it is undesirable to continue with the current method of water management, our question is, of course, what should we take into account? It is repeatedly stated that we should pay attention to water and take it as a starting point for our spatial design.
The design team of Kennisregio aan Zee takes the warning from the 'Blue Lens' literally and has taken the natural system of 800 as its starting point. As far as they are concerned, the system of the old dunes must then be rebuilt, and serious work must be done to expand the dunes towards the sea. If the current polder system is unsustainable in 2150, areas will have to be given up. Based on the height maps, the design team propose to relocate neighborhoods and resettle those residents at the heads of the old and new dune areas. The team assumes that densification will eventually be needed there. Hence parts of Katwijk, Oegstgeest and Leiden will disappear from the map. But, as the team says: there will be more and better nature a resilient landscape and many opportunities to extract drinking water!
In addition to follow up research what will happen is:
- The supervisors of the four design teams will produce a booklet based on the presentations;
- They will look more broadly at the landscape as a condition for setting up a business, establishing the relationship between the knowledge clusters and the conditions for setting up a business (such as housing, accessibility);
- An assignment is underway to spatially map the relationship between the various economic clusters as a basis for a REOS proposal for the Sea Knowledge Region;
- In the context of Holland Rijnland two studies will be started into the economy of the region. This is broader than just the knowledge industry. First, an economic picture will be taken of each municipality, which will be the basis for a broader vision of the region (the Heading Document for the Holland Rhineland Economy) referred to above;
In a further elaboration of the Regional Environmental Agenda for Holland Rijnland a series of working ateliers will be started this year for the west flank of the urbanized area from Zee to Alphen (west flank = NL Space Campus to Heineken), looking at the various spatial domains (climate, energy, urbanization, economy, landscape and mobility).
